It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
This bill already has the endorsement of dozens of peace and antiwar groups, draft resisters, religious organizations, antiwar feminists, and civil libertarians.
The timing of this bill is more critical than ever: Unless Congress takes action before December 18, 2026, the SSS will start collecting data from other Federal agencies to try to register potential draftees “automatically”. The White House is currently reviewing regulations to implement that change in the draft law, which was buried in the annual defense (sic) bill enacted in December 2025.
The garbage-in, garbage-out process of automated and involuntary registration won’t produce a list that’s complete, accurate, or fit for the purpose of reliably and provably delivering induction orders. But it will allow war planners to continue to pretend that a draft is available as a fallback, so they don’t have to consider whether enough Americans will fight the wars they are planning, even if they prove bloodier than expected. And it will produce a list that’s vulnerable to misuse and weaponization.
“If a war is worth fighting, Congress will vote to declare it and people will volunteer”, Sen. Paul said in in reintroducing the Selective Service Repeal Act. According to Sen. Wyden, “The Selective Service is an outdated program that costs millions of taxpayer dollars to prepare for a military draft that Americans don’t want or need. There is no need to replicate the same draft that sent two million unwilling young men to war 50 years ago.”
The attempt at “automatic” draft registration will inevitably be a fiasco. The only way to head it off is to end draft registration entirely. That won’t happen unless Congress feels public pressure — soon.
In the past, the Selective Service Repeal Act has received significant bipartisan support in the House, but as of now it’s been reintroduced only in the Senate in the current Congress. Opponents of the draft should push their Representatives to sponsor a House version as soon as possible.
The Selective Service Repeal Act is unlikely to be enacted as a standalone bill, especially in the current Congress. It probably stands a chance of approval only if it is included in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2027. So it’s critical to find members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees who will introduce the Selective Service Repeal Act as an amendment to the NDAA, while the NDAA is still in committee.
Draft registration failed, but the hapless Selective Service System and its network of undertrained and unready draft boards have lingered, zombie-like, for decades. “Automatic” registration won’t work and will cause new problems. Tell Congress it’s time to end draft registration entirely and stop pretending that Americans would accept or comply with any sort of military draft.
A prominent Evangelical reverend stunned political analysts and observers on Sunday with his speech during President Donald Trump's "Rededicate 250" prayer event at the National Mall.
The Rev. Franklin Graham, the son of the late preacher Billy Graham, spoke via a pre-recorded video at the prayer event, describing America as a country that has become "morally rotten" and "completely sick with sin." He mentioned issues like "transgenderism" and "opening women's locker rooms to men" as a couple of examples.
"Why do we need to rededicate ourselves?" Graham said. "When God sent the flood and destroyed the earth, it was because man's heart had become so evil and violent. In the news, we see unimaginable violence: rapes, murders, [and] unimaginable violence. Video games are full of violence. We have an insatiable appetite for violence."
Graham's comments came at a time when the Trump administration was receiving significant scrutiny for its handling of the war in Iran, including the president's multiple threats to annihilate the Iranian civilization.
The "Rededicate 250" event was billed as a "historic gathering of Americans" at the National Mall for worship, prayer, and "giving thanks for God’s presence in our national life throughout 250 years of American history," according to the event's website.
Political analysts and observers reacted to Graham's speech on social media.
"No mention of corruption, starting illegal wars, carpet bombing schools, funding genocide, building concentration camps, torture, destruction of the constitution, kicking people off healthcare, cutting free school meals, giving all the money to the rich? SHOCKING!" liberal political commentator Kyle Kulinski posted on X.
"Did he mention an actual sin that seems all too common—sexual abuse by clergy?" Bill Kristol, editor at large for The Bulwark, posted on X.
"It’s telling that Graham is never this concerned about poverty, health care access, or anything that would actually make people’s lives better," Hemant Mehta, a former "Jeopardy!" champion, posted on X. "Just bigotry all the way down. That’s what Jesus taught him."
Heavily edited video of Trump address at national prayer event sparks outrage
President Donald Trump sparked outrage on Sunday after his heavily edited recorded speech played at his national prayer event in Washington, D.C.
Trump addressed the crowd at his "Rededicate 250" event, billed as an effort to highlight "God’s presence in our national life throughout 250 years of American history," according to the event's website. It was held at the National Mall and featured appearances from Trump's Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and several prominent MAGA and Evangelical Christian figures.
In the video, Trump appears to struggle to read a Bible verse. Onlookers also noted multiple edits to the video, which called the authenticity of Trump's message into question.
Political analysts and observers mocked the clip on social media.
"Holy s---," Ron Filipkowski, editor-in-chief of the MeidasTouch Network, posted on X. "This is a prerecorded message with lots of obvious edits, and this is the best he can do? He looks like a cadaver, sounds like he's on a ventilator, and can't even properly read the sections that come from a book he's never read."
"Lmao is Trump 'reading' a Bible verse from a teleprompter," political commentary account "Wu Tang is for the Children" posted on X.
"Disturbingly theocratic," Julian Andreone, Capitol Hill reporter for Drop Site News, posted on X.
Opinion
What Freedom 250’s prayer wall reveals about Christian nationalism’s true believers
(RNS) — Again and again, the prayers on the site show a portrait of a nation in pain, and that America is a divinely chosen place that must protect itself from enemies.
A broad variety of submitted prayers on the America Prays website. (Screen grab)
(RNS) — As part of the “Rededicate 250” event in Washington, D.C., on Sunday (May 17), organizers are inviting Americans to submit prayers for the nation through a public online “prayer wall” on the affiliated America Prays website. While the so-called rededication of the United States as “One Nation Under God” is drawing a great deal of attention for its fusion of politics, theology and nationalism, the prayer wall itself has received little scrutiny.
A close look at the words found on the site — where Americans are exhorted to “share what’s on your heart” in the verbal formulation of contemporary American evangelicalism — offers a rare opportunity to watch what looks like real Christian nationalism. It appears not merely as political rhetoric from movement leaders, but as lived devotional language among the posted prayers, which seem, not surprisingly, to be entirely Christian in their orientation.
The prayers on the wall are divided by categories like “Country,” “Military,” “Family,” “Healing” and “Peace.” Since there is a form that must be filled out by anyone wishing to contribute a prayer, it is reasonable to assume not all the prayers shared with the government through the website are posted publicly.
Many of the prayers are deeply personal. For example: “I am believing God for a new vehicle, furniture and beds for our place. Thank you.” –Texas, May 13. Or “Pray for daughter in law to get help for bipolar schizophrenia. . .My heart aches, I know God is in control.” — California, May 12. Another person says they are going through a “bad divorce,” but knows “God is my lawyer and he will make things right.”
Taken together, these anguished personal prayers reveal a portrait of a nation in pain.
The prayers use colloquial grammar and spelling, and appear to be written by real people – with real names and actual problems like ALS, joblessness and loneliness. In this way, the prayer wall provides a strikingly authentic contrast to the “Voices of Liberty” quotations elsewhere on the Freedom 250 website, which purport to be the words of “real Americans” explaining “what freedom means to them” but which appear to be AI-generated fakes.
But in Prayer Wall sections dedicated to “Country” and “Military,” the devotional language of Christian nationalism emerges clearly. Here is one example from Missouri, May 11: “Lord Jesus, King Jesus dawn our nation from the festering pit we have fallen into the past decades. Destroy our enemies physical and spiritual. Allow us to be the city on the hill you desired us to be. Allow us to discipline ourselves and other nations for your glory alone. We love you and rededicate ourselves now in your holy mighty name Jesus, Amen”
The prayer includes vivid language about personal devotion, national decline, spiritual warfare, American exceptionalism and fantasies of political restoration. To this person, the nation itself has become a sacred object: fallen, endangered, chosen and in need of purification and recommitment. But the nation is, at the same time, a weapon that can be used to “discipline other nations for your glory alone.”
A prayer card from the America Prays website of a prayer submitted from Missouri on May 11. (Screen grab) A prayer card from the America Prays website of a prayer submitted from Arizona on May 14. (Screen grab)
Another prayer in the “Country” section (from Arizona, May 14) reads: “Lord Jesus please hear our cries for this nation and the world. You and only You can truly fight this battle we are in. This spitiritual [sic] battle against evil. I pray for our leaders to seek You in all they do, trust You and Your plans for this nation. That You would protect them and their families as they believe and trust in You. I pray Psalm 91 over this nation, especially verse 11: ‘For He will give His angels orders concerning you, to protect you in all your ways.'”
Again and again, the prayers on the site return to similar themes: America as a divinely chosen nation that has drifted from God; enemies both internal and external; fears of moral collapse; hopes for restoration; calls for repentance; and requests for divine protection over the country and its leaders.
The prayer wall, taken as a whole, is especially striking for the way in which these grand national and religious narratives coexist alongside deeply ordinary personal anxieties. The result is an emotional public theology in which private suffering, national identity, religious symbolism and political longing are deeply intertwined.
The fusion of the theological and the political has long been part of American religious life. Historians have noted the persistence of providential language in American politics from the Puritans onward — the belief that the U.S. possesses a unique divine mission and stands in a covenantal relationship with God. But the prayers collected on the Freedom 250 site reveal how intensely devotional that language remains for many Americans. The nation is imagined as more than a political entity, but as a spiritual project whose fortunes rise and fall according to both divine favor and satanic power.
The language of spiritual warfare appears repeatedly on the prayer wall, across all categories. Participants pray against “darkness,” “evil forces” and enemies “physical and spiritual,” as well as attacks on Christianity itself. In many cases, the boundaries between political opponents, cultural change, demonic influence and national decline are impossible to separate.
The prayers also reveal the continuing emotional power of older forms of American civil religion. References to the U.S. as a “city on a hill,” to national chosenness and to America’s divine purpose appear constantly throughout the submissions. What emerges is a vision of the nation not as a democratic republic governed by the people or of a constitutional order governed by laws, but as a sacred community whose religious identity is in need of urgent restoration and defense.
While the speeches that will be made on the National Mall by religious and governmental leaders like Speaker Mike Johnson, the Rev. Franklin Graham and Bishop Robert Barron will be important to analyze and contextualize, the prayer wall may actually tell us more about the emotional and spiritual structure of contemporary Christian nationalism than the speeches ever could. The Freedom 250 prayer wall offers a glimpse into how Christian nationalist ideas operate not only as political arguments or propaganda being imposed from above, but as useful and powerful frameworks through which many Americans interpret their own suffering, hope, fear and national identity.
A man carries a wooden cross near the Washington Monument ahead of the "Rededicate 250: National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise and Thanksgiving" event aimed to celebrate America's 250th birthday, in Washington, D.C. , U.S. May 16, 2026. REUTERS/Seth Herald
President Donald Trump is expected to be joined by several of his top officials and allies Sunday in Washington, D.C. for Rededicate 250, a national prayer event hosted on the National Mall, and one Christian group is working to erect a “15-foot-tall” surprise for the president in protest.
Organized by Freedom250, a Trump-aligned group that has received millions of taxpayer dollars, the event has been decried by some critics as promoting Christian nationalism. The government watchdog group Public Citizen, for instance, condemned the event as being “less like a traditional religious event and more like a program for the Church of Trump.”
Thousands are expected to attend the free event, among them being protesters, some of whom belong to Faithful America, which describes itself as a “network of progressive Christians,” per a report published Sunday by The Washington Post, which described them as a “Christian group focused on opposing religious nationalism.”
Working in tandem with another group, Freedom From Religion Foundation, which the Post described as a “mostly secular group focused on church-state separation," the two groups have a surprise planned for the president, one that appears to parody the recent erection of a 22-foot-tall, $400,000 gold-plated statue of Trump at one of his golf clubs.
“The organizations said they will erect a 15-foot-tall balloon of ‘a golden calf with a Trump-like visage’ a few blocks from the prayer event,” the Post reported.
The nation’s capital has been host to a number of installations designed to mock the president, including the installation of satirical arcade game cabinets last week mocking Trump’s wildly unpopular war against Iran, and the erection of statues depicting Trump with convicted sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Rededicate 250 touts a star-studded prayer bash with politicians, Christian celebrities
(RNS) — But a new poll finds many Americans aren’t comfortable mixing religion and politics.
Work continues on the stage for the Rededicate 250 event on the National Mall, Tuesday, May 12, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
(RNS) — Bishops, evangelical influencers, Cabinet members and an actor who plays Jesus are a few of the speakers and performers scheduled to participate in “Rededicate 250,” the Trump administration’s daylong prayer celebration happening on the National Mall this weekend.
Advertised as a “rededication of our country as One Nation Under God” and a “once in a lifetime national moment,” the Sunday event is intended to reflect on the faith of America’s founders and to appeal to God to bless and guide the nation. It’s an initiative of Freedom 250, a White House-backed, public-private campaign staging patriotic events to celebrate the nation’s 250th birthday (not to be confused with the bipartisan America 250 efforts). Supporters welcome the event as a tribute to America’s roots, while critics say the Christian-saturated, MAGA-heavy festival casts an exclusionary vision of America’s past and present. Americans United for Separation of Church and State suggested the event advances Christian nationalism rather than religious freedom.
The rally has inspired both supportive and oppositional pre-events, the former led by activist and worship leader Sean Feucht, and the latter spearheaded by the Interfaith Alliance and a cadre of progressive religious leaders.
In recent days, a handful of Christian celebrities have been announced as Rededicate 250 participants. Grammy-winning Christian musician Chris Tomlin, known for the hits “Holy Forever” and “How Great Is Our God,” will headline the event. Jonathan Roumie, the Catholic actor, influencer and star of the hit Jesus show “The Chosen,” was recently added as a speaker. Roumie has spoken at the March For Life and starred in a Super Bowl ad. He will be joined by evangelical influencer, podcast host and “Duck Dynasty” alum Sadie Robertson Huff, who built a ministry platform catered to women and has over 5 million Instagram followers.
Other listed speakers include many of President Donald Trump’s closest friends and allies, most of them conservative Christians. Prominent political figures include House Speaker Mike Johnson (a Southern Baptist); Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth (who worships in churches linked to the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches); and Secretary of State Marco Rubio (a Catholic). Trump is expected to send a recorded video message.
Of the 19 faith leaders currently listed, 18 are Christian, and most are evangelical. Among them are the Rev. Franklin Graham, president and CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association; Pastor Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference; Pentecostal preacher and White House faith office senior adviser Paula White-Cain; and Pastor Robert Jeffress, who leads First Baptist Church in Dallas.
Bishop Robert Barron, who leads the Diocese of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota, and Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who recently retired from his position as bishop of the Archdiocese of New York, both Catholic, are also scheduled speakers.
The only non-Christian religious leader currently listed is Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, who leads Congregation Shearith Israel in New York City and serves on Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission.
According to organizers, the speaker list is still being finalized.
If Trump’s religious revival is meant to encourage a fusion of Christianity and government, a new Pew Research poll released Thursday (May 14) shows Americans are not buying it. Although more than half of Americans say religion plays a positive role in society, they do not want their government to stop enforcing separation of church and state.
The poll, taken in April among 3,592 U.S. adults, shows that those views have barely budged over the past few years. Eight of out 10 Americans say religious congregations should not support candidates in elections. And two-thirds say churches and other houses of worship should keep out of political matters.
“17% of U.S. adults now say they want Christianity to be the official religion of the U.S.” (Graphic courtesy of Pew Research Center)
As for Christian nationalism, the poll shows, it is far from popular.
Only 17% of Americans think the government should declare Christianity the official religion of the U.S., a slight jump over 2024 when 13% said so. Generally, the idea of Christian nationalism remains more negative than positive: 31% view it unfavorably, 10% view it favorably and the rest don’t know enough or don’t have an opinion.
“To the extent that President Trump has a rally that explicitly espouses Christian nationalism, he’s not going to get very far beyond, perhaps, the people at the rally,” said John Green, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Akron. “There are people that have that view, but they’re a very small minority, even within the Republican Party.”
The poll also found 52% of U.S. adults think “conservative Christians have gone too far in trying to push their religious values in the government and public schools.” It had a margin of error of plus or minus 1.9 percentage points.
Feucht, the activist and musician, and Pastor Mark Driscoll, who were previously rumored to be Rededicate 250 participants, will instead be hosting a concert at Washington, D.C.’s Sylvan Theater. In a video this week, Feucht said Driscoll would join him at Saturday’s concert, which he described as a “four-hour revival meeting” that’s part of the battle for the “soul of America.”
Several groups have come out against Rededicate 250. The Council on American-Islamic Relations called for organizers to expand the speakers list to better reflect the nation’s diverse religious landscape.
“Muslims have been present in significant numbers in the country since the colonial era,” the advocacy organization said. “Inviting speakers who represent many faiths projects the strength of our religious liberty.”
Americans United for Separation of Church and State said the event advanced Christian nationalism rather than religious freedom, and on Friday, a group of progressive faith leaders — including the Rev. Paul Raushenbush, president and CEO of the Interfaith Alliance; Rabbi Jonah Pesner, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism; and the Rev. Adam Russell Taylor, president of Sojourners — will host a virtual press briefing that argues Rededicate 250 misrepresents how America’s founders approached religious tolerance.
As a counterpoint to the Rededicate event, Interfaith Alliance said it will team up with protest artist Robin Bell to project pro-religious freedom messages, including “Democracy NOT Theocracy” and “Reject Christian Nationalism,” on the walls of the National Gallery of Art on Thursday evening.
“Instead of leaning into the incredible tapestry of American religion, they’re really only highlighting a thin slice of American religiosity, and elevating it into a primary role and a privileged role, one could argue, with government funding,” Raushenbush said. “Unfortunately it feels more like a political rally than a religious one.”
Jack Jenkins contributed to this reporting.
Christian nationalists cling to Trump because they 'know they’re in decline'
Faith leaders pray over President Donald Trump in the Oval Office, Image via the White House.
President Donald Trump and his administration have openly preached for Christianity to shape national policy since he began his second term — yet the vast majority of Americans do not share this agenda.
“The religious right has been ascendant during the second presidency of Donald Trump, and they’ve harnessed his disdain for rules and norms to blur the lines between church and state,” reported Vox's Christian Paz on Thursday. “Inside the White House, the secretary of defense has framed the war in Iran and American military action abroad as sanctioned and guided by God. Outside the government, this alliance between church and state often skirts near the edge of outright idolatry. Conservative pastors are erecting golden statues of Trump (but insisting it does not mirror the infamous golden calf of the Old Testament). They’re extending their hands over the president in prayer after comparing him to Jesus and standing by him, with some mild criticism, after he cast himself as an AI-slop Messiah.”
Yet despite this open call for religion to dictate American policy, Paz reported that a recent survey by Pew Research Center reveals that most Americans do not want this to happen. A mere 10 percent identify as Christian nationalists, compared to 31 percent who oppose them and 59 percent who have no opinion. When it comes to the division between church and state, 13 percent want it weakened while 54 percent support it and 32 percent have no opinion.
According to the Public Religion Research Institute’s president and founder Robert P. Jones, Trump and his administration are pushing for “one sector of Christianity" that has failed to catch on with both religious and non-religious Americans.
“It hasn’t resulted in major shifts in the landscape,” Jones explained. “In other words, they’re not pulling people into that worldview. They’re basically just appealing to a small subset of Americans who already hold those views and who just happen to be their political base.”
Even some former Trumpers oppose Trump’s Christian nationalism. In March former Republican US Rep. Joe Walsh said that the theocrats are “out of the closet. They're loud and proud. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson talks about this. Republican members of Congress talk about this. Republican and MAGA thought leaders talk about the fact that America needs to be a Christian country. It needs to be officially designated as a Christian country.”
Citing how Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth openly cited Jesus Christ when discussing his war against Iran with US troops, Walsh added that Hegseth “knows that not every American worships Jesus Christ. So what's he doing? Here's what he's doing. Pete Hegseth is a white Christian nationalist. Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, is a white Christian nationalist. He wants America to be a white Christian nation.”
“Our founders were very enlightened,” Walsh continued, saying that even though many of them were religious Christians they made sure that “we do not have an official state religion. The very thought of that, the very notion of that is antithetical to what America is. … Christian nationalism is utterly un-American … as un-American as Islamism is. … Islamism is a radical concept that everybody's got to be Islam. Christian nationalism, same thing. Everybody's got to be Christian. Both are utterly un-American.”
He added, “And I guess what I'm saying right now is, as I close on this, this Un-American, and by the way, un-Christian belief, has overtaken the Republican Party. And we need everybody to wake up to it. Fast. and help all of us, help everyone defeat it.”
Tuesday, May 12, 2026
A $1.5 Trillion Military Budget Is a Gift to the Grifters
Last week “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth insulted Americans by claiming that a 50 percent increase in the US military budget – from an incomprehensible one trillion dollars to an impossible one and a half trillion – was a “fiscally responsible investment.”
“Thanks to President Trump’s $1.5 trillion defense budget, this War Department has moved from bureaucracy to business,” he said last Thursday.
In a way he was right, though. The huge increase is much more about “business” than what is needed to protect the United States from potential invasion.
But it isn’t the kind of “business” that most supporters of free markets would applaud. On the contrary, this is the business of transferring massive amounts of wealth from the struggling middle and working classes to the well-connected Beltway elite based on lies and scare tactics.
The US mainstream media is crucial in manufacturing the fairy tale that if we don’t mortgage our children’s and grandchildren’s future to finance this obscene military budget, we will be attacked or invaded by some evil foreign power.
It’s not difficult to do a little research and see why the mainstream – and even some “independent” – media outlets push these scare tactics: they are owned or funded by giant corporations with close ties to military contractors.
This unhealthy relationship is known as “corporatism” – the intermingling of pseudo-private companies with the government. It is the precursor to actual fascism, where the government takes a stake in such companies.
We’re getting there faster than most Americans understand.
The whole scam is not about protecting the citizens of the United States. It’s about protecting the US empire overseas, which actually harms the citizens of the United States.
Yes, they rob us to fund their empire and lie to us that it keeps us safe. Nothing could be further from the truth. Our constant military interventions on virtually every continent of the globe only build resentment among the rest of the world’s population. Anyone who thinks people overseas welcome US bombs has been watching too much Fox News or reading too much Washington Post.
And what do we get for the most expensive military on earth – larger than the combined militaries of the next dozen or so countries? Not much. Iran’s military budget is less than one percent of ours, yet Iran destroyed or disabled every US military base in the Middle East.
It turns out that Iran has destroyed dozens of multi-million dollar US spy drones – and several near-billion dollar spy radar stations – with their own drones costing mere thousands of dollars each.
The US surprise attack was supposed to make Iran cower and beg for mercy, but it did the opposite: it showed that despite the trillions extorted from Americans for the most expensive military on earth, the US military can no longer win the wars that US presidents illegally force them into fighting.
The US military continues to fight World War II – with massively expensive aircraft carriers that do not dare get close to combat – while warfighting has evolved into something entirely different.
The only good thing about the Iran war is that it demonstrates how much the special interests have lied to us about the need to continue our suicidal military spending increases.
It was never about protecting the United States. It is about protecting the ever-growing bank accounts of the special interests at the expense of the rest of us. It needs to stop. Now.
Ron Paul is a former Republican congressman from Texas. He was the 1988 Libertarian Party candidate for president.
Thursday, May 07, 2026
Death by a Thousand Cuts: The MAGA Supreme Court Destroys the Voting Right Act
Protect the Voting Rights Act rally at the SCOTUS (February 27, 2013) / Washington, DC / Photo by David Sachs/SEIU / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
The US Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v Callais is the latest and probably most decisive blow to the Voting Rights Act since the attacks went full force in the aftermath of the election of President Obama. The attacks, well-orchestrated and following a path that had been advanced by the Redeemer (white supremacist) movement of the 19th century, has worked to use the words of the Constitution and Voting Rights Act as a way to destroy the intent behind the Voting Rights Act.
The Louisiana v Callais decision revolves around a Congressional district that was created in Louisiana to address the need for Black political power in the state. Continuous efforts by racist Republicans have aimed to eliminate Black political power and cripple the Democrats. The Court decided that too much attention had been paid to race in the creation of this district. The clear intent of this decision is to eliminate race as a category to which attention should be paid in the creation of Congressional districts.
Let’s be clear about a few things. First, this matter of “race.” “Race” is not a descriptive term, contrary to the interpretation that is continually offered by Justice Roberts. It is about history. The history of this country has involved the oppression and marginalization, if not outright suppression of political representation and power for particular populations, most especially African Americans, Chicanos/Mexican Americans, Native Americans, (pre-1965) Asians, and Puerto Ricans. Continuous efforts have been undertaken by forces on the Right to disenfranchise these populations, but rarely in the name of “race.” In fact, if one looks at the 19th and early 20th centuries, supposedly race neutral language was frequently used in order to suppress communities of color.
In today’s situation, Justice Roberts, et.al. would have use believe that racist marginalization is no longer a significant problem and, therefore, attention to “race” in the construction of Congressional districts is somehow inappropriate. This is a classic example of how the Right wishes us to ignore history and pretend as if we can all march off into the future holding hands and sing “We HAVE overcome.”
Second, the destruction of the Voting Rights Act is part and parcel of an effort to further destroy democracy. It is important that we view this in relationship to Trump’s call to the state of Texas to redistrict as a way of gaining more Republican seats in the House of Representatives, an effort subsequently attempted by several other Republican-led states and then countered by Democrats. MAGA wishes to secure long-term, if not permanent, minority rule by the 30% of the population that is entranced with MAGA, supports the super-rich, and seeks a return to the 19th century, with all that entails.
Third, MAGA wishes to eliminate all Congressional districts that have a majority people of color population. Despite the periodic MAGA voices of color that are pulled onto the stage to claim that MAGA is not white supremacist, the reality that MAGA understands is that most majority voters of color districts favor Democrats. Therefore, suppressing the Voting Rights Act and eliminating majority voters of color districts aims at…you guessed it…suppressing Democrats.
One of the tremendous mistakes made by too many supporters of the Voting Rights Act has been to assume that the defense of the Voting Rights Act was assured—in part because for years there was a bi-partisan consensus—and that any defense need only take place in the courts or on the floor of Congress. As the rightwing mobilized, first into the Tea Party and later into MAGA, it should have been clear that a full-scale assault was underway against democracy. What we are seeing now is only one further step towards rightwing authoritarian rule. This cannot happen.
What we need immediately, and have needed for years, is a mass voting rights movement that links litigation and lobbying with grassroots organizing and mobilization. The Voting Rights Act was the result of people in the streets who put immense pressure on Congress. We need that once again, along with new and creative tactics. Let’s consider a few.
We need a new way of drawing Congressional districts that factor in matters such as the long history of racist marginalization.
We need to consider the use of ballot initiatives that force states to change the manner and content of voting districts. Consider the Florida ballot initiative that was used to re-enfranchise thousands of formerly incarcerated citizens. The ballot succeeded only to be undermined by Republicans in the Florida legislature. Knowing what we know now, ballot initiatives must be worded in such a way that nefarious forces cannot undercut them.
We need to prepare for November 2026. MAGA has given every indication that they aim to grab our voting rights. We cannot let that happen. We must vote early and vote in huge numbers against anti-democratic forces. We must start planning now, in our local communities and with a broad array of groups, regarding how to respond to anti-democratic attacks on voting. We must prepare our friends, neighbors and family for the sorts of disinformation that will flow and will be aimed at suppressing our vote.
All of this can and must be done. The Supreme Court decision is a horrible development and there is no way to dress it up and pretend otherwise. What we can do, however, is neutralize its impact by our own organizing, mobilizing, and sheer numbers. Indeed, we must openly challenge those who wish to strip our rights and ensure dominance for the rich and infamous.
Bill Fletcher, Jr. is the coordinator and cofounder of Standing for Democracy. @BillFletcherJr, billfletcherjr.com.Email
Bill Fletcher Jr (born 1954) has been an activist since his teen years. Upon graduating from college he went to work as a welder in a shipyard, thereby entering the labor movement. Over the years he has been active in workplace and community struggles as well as electoral campaigns. He has worked for several labor unions in addition to serving as a senior staffperson in the national AFL-CIO. Fletcher is the former president of TransAfrica Forum; a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies; and in the leadership of several other projects. Fletcher is the co-author (with Peter Agard) of “The Indispensable Ally: Black Workers and the Formation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, 1934-1941”; the co-author (with Dr. Fernando Gapasin) of “Solidarity Divided: The crisis in organized labor and a new path toward social justice“; and the author of “‘They’re Bankrupting Us’ – And Twenty other myths about unions.” Fletcher is a syndicated columnist and a regular media commentator on television, radio and the Web.
John Roberts might as well wear the robes of the Klan
FILE PHOTO: WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 20: U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts attends inauguration ceremonies in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol on January 20, 2025 in Washington, DC. Donald Trump takes office for his second term as the 47th president of the United States. Chip Somodevilla/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo
George Wallace was sworn in as Governor of Alabama in 1963 and famously declared in his inauguration speech (written by a Ku Klux Klan leader) “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” Two years later, Alabama state troopers violently broke up a nighttime voting rights march during which a police officer shot and killed young African American protester and Baptist deacon Jimmie Lee Jackson, who was unarmed and protecting his mother.
In response, civil rights leaders, including Martin Luther King and John Lewis, organized a mass march from Selma to Montgomery over the Edmund Pettus Bridge in an attempt to deliver a civil rights and voting rights message to Gov. Wallace. It became known as “Bloody Sunday” as state troopers gassed and beat the protestors, including fracturing Lewis’ skull and sending 57 others to the hospital. Televised images of the brutal attack shocked the nation, directly leading to President Johnson’s push for the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Numerous Americans, black and white, were injured and even died fighting for the Civil Rights Act. John Roberts and his five Republican Supreme Court colleagues effectively overturned the Civil Rights Act and essentially disenfranchised black voters.
George Wallace tried to disenfranchise black voters with violent state troopers. Roberts disenfranchised black voters with the stroke of a pen. It’s not hyperbole to say that while Roberts wears the black robes of a judge, he may as well wear the white robes of the Klan.
It’s not hyperbole to say that while Roberts wears the black robes of a judge, he may as well wear the white robes of the Klan.
In her dissent to Louisiana v. Callais in which the 6-member Republican majority of the Court effectively overturned Section 2 of the Civil Rights Act, Justice Elena Kagan wrote: “The Voting Rights Act is—or, now more accurately, was—one of the most consequential, efficacious, and amply justified exercises of federal legislative power in our Nation’s history. It was born of the literal blood of Union soldiers and civil rights marchers. It ushered in awe-inspiring change, bringing this Nation closer to fulfilling the ideals of democracy and racial equality.” Kagan concluded, “ I dissent because the Court betrays its duty to faithfully implement the great statute Congress wrote. I dissent because the Court’s decision will set back the foundational right Congress granted of racial equality in electoral opportunity. I dissent.”
But the Court didn’t destroy the Civil Rights Act in a day. It was part of a lifelong mission by John Roberts to do so.
Starting as early as 1981, as a 26-year-old lawyer just three years out of Harvard Law School, Roberts began his campaign to undermine the Civil Rights Act. He got himself a job as Special Assistant to Ronald Reagan’s Attorney General William French Smith. Congress was about to amend the Civil Rights Act to provide that state laws would be illegal if they had a racially discriminatory effect, without having to prove that they had a racially discriminatory intent—something almost impossible to prove.
Roberts zealously took on the assignment coming up with arguments against the Amendment. Roberts wrote over 25 memos opposing the Amendment. In one, he argued that the Civil Rights Act was “the most intrusive interference imaginable by federal courts into state and local processes.”
Despite the efforts of Roberts and others in the Reagan administration, Congress passed the Amendment with overwhelming bipartisan support. Little did anyone imagine at the time that Roberts would become Chief Justice and the leader of right-wing Justices’ ultimately successful efforts to undermine the Civil Rights Act as he had initially set out to do as a young Justice Department official.
At his confirmation hearing, Roberts told the Senate “The existing Voting Rights Act, the constitutionality has been upheld and I don’t have any issue with that.” He was lying.
In 2013, Roberts got his first shot at dismantling the Civil Rights Act. In his 5-4 ruling in Shelby v. Holder, he overturned Section 5 of the Act , which required that states with a history of racist voter suppression pre-clear changes in election laws with the Justice Department to be sure they were not reinstituting racial suppression. He argued that it was no longer necessary since racism in America had diminished since the Act had been passed. In response, many states previously subject to preclearance rushed to enact new voter suppression laws.
In coming years, the Roberts Court further chipped away at the Voting Rights Act. But Roberts finally got his opportunity to make the rest of the Voting Rights Act a nullity when Louisiana v. Calais came before the Court this year. In a 6-3 opinion, which Roberts assigned to his anti-voting rights ally Justice Samuel Alito, the Court overruled the other crown jewel of the Voting Rights Act which had previously held that racially gerrymandered districts were illegal if they had racially discriminatory effect. Instead, racially gerrymandered districts would only be illegal if it can be proven that they have a racially discriminatory intent, a bar that is almost impossible to clear.
This was the argument that Roberts first made as a young Justice Department attorney back in 1982. As Chief Justice, he finally succeeded in his long campaign to revoke the Civil Rights Act.
Meanwhile, if a state can claim that it’s gerrymandering is motivated by ensuring that its political party wins, it’s totally cool with the Roberts Court. With the Court overturning both Section 2 and Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, it effectively repealed the entire Voting Rights Act that so many had fought and died for.
The very next day, Florida passed a redistricting law that would allow for new levels of gerrymandering designed to erase districts with large populations of black voters.
Roberts accomplished with a pen what George Wallace had tried to accomplish with violent state troopers.
'Desperate' GOP now taking advantage of one of 'worst Supreme Court decisions': analysts
People protest on the day the U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments regarding the composition of Louisiana electoral districts, in Washington, D.C., U.S., October 15, 2025. REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
The day after the U.S. Supreme Court crippled the federal Voting Rights Act, NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson addressed a virtual gathering for the group’s members and supporters where he ranked the landmark decision alongside the court’s most infamous cases.
Dred Scott excluded Black people from American citizenship ahead of the Civil War. Plessy blessed policies of racial segregation in 1896. And now there was Callais.
The opinion will “probably go down in the history book as one of three of the worst Supreme Court decisions in the history of this nation,” Johnson said.
The Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling in Louisiana vs. Callais on April 29 cleared states to split apart, for political gain, congressional districts where a majority of residents belong to minority groups. The court’s conservative majority said Louisiana lawmakers acted unconstitutionally when they intentionally created the state’s second majority-Black district, which the justices found unnecessary.
A week after its release, the decision is roiling politics across the South as states move at a rapid pace to recast the political landscape that has taken progressives by surprise.
Republicans, triumphant over their victory at the court, are rushing fresh gerrymanders through Southern statehouses in time for the November midterm elections in an effort to strengthen their party’s control over the region’s U.S. House delegations. They’re acting at lightning speed, over loud protests, and have nullified votes by suspending ongoing elections.
Democrats, especially Black residents, are furious with both the court and GOP politicians, who they believe are poised to wipe away decades of Black political progress in the region. The new maps that seek to oust Black members of Congress and prevent the election of Democrats in the future recall a Jim Crow past of literacy tests and poll taxes, they say.
“We refuse to let you kill us by killing our vote,” Eliza Jane Franklin, a resident of rural Barbour County, Alabama, told a state House hearing Tuesday.
Eliza Jane Franklin of Barbour County, Alabama, holds up a copy of “Witness to Injustice,” a book by David Frost Jr. about racial violence and the Civil Rights Movement in Eufala, Alabama, while speaking to the state House Ways and Means General Fund Committee on May 5, 2026. (Photo by Brian Lyman/Alabama Reflector) Decision kicked off legislative efforts
The Alabama Legislature is moving to authorize a special primary election using a congressional map currently blocked in federal court, if a district court or, ultimately, the Supreme Court allows the state to move forward. At least one of the state’s two Black members of the U.S. House would be vulnerable.
In Louisiana, the governor has suspended the state’s primary elections for the U.S. House, setting aside some 42,000 votes that were already cast. Republican lawmakers will begin advancing a new gerrymander in a matter of days, aiming to force out at least one of the state’s two Black House members.
Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantissigned a new map into law Monday that aims to hand his party up to four additional U.S. House seats. State lawmakers approved the map hours after the Supreme Court’s decision. The map has already drawn multiple legal challenges.
The South Carolina Legislature is weighing whether to redraw maps. And Tennessee lawmakers want to gerrymander a Memphis district currently held by U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, a white Democrat who represents the state’s only majority-Black district.
“The Supreme Court has opined that redistricting, like the judicial system, should be color-blind,” Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton, a Republican, said in a statement Thursday unveiling a plan to divide the Memphis area among three congressional seats.
Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton. (Photo by John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout)
More states, in the South and elsewhere, are expected to pursue new maps over the next two years. Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp ruled out a special session this year, for example, but supports redistricting before the 2028 election.
The current moment represents an extraordinary time in America, said Rebekah Caruthers, president and CEO of Fair Elections Center, a nonpartisan voting rights group. But she also called it a reversion “back to America.”
Many thought the presence of Black, Hispanic and Asian American elected officials somehow meant racial discrimination no longer existed, she said.
“And unfortunately, that is a misread of American history,” Caruthers said. “And perhaps it is a retelling of American history for those who want to gloss over America’s very sordid past, especially when it comes to voting rights.”
Midterms impact
The scramble by a handful of Southern states to redraw districts comes as Republicans grasp for any scintilla of advantage ahead of the midterm elections in November.
A U.S. House under Democratic control would spell the end of much of President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda, produce a wave of investigations into his administration and potentially lead to a vote to impeach him in the House, though the Senate would almost certainly acquit him.
U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, a Democrat who represents Tennessee’s only majority-Black district, speaks to a crowd before a special legislative session that began May 5, 2026. (Photo by John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout)
“This is all about Donald Trump wanting to avoid hard questions and oversight hearings about his actions,” Cohen said at a news conference in Memphis.
Seth McKee, a political science professor at Oklahoma State University who has studied Southern politics, said Republicans are attempting to “staunch the bleeding” ahead of unfavorable midterm elections.
“The desperation of this Republican Party, it’s off the charts,” McKee said. Redistricting push supercharged
Prior to Callais, Trump had already urged Republicans to redraw congressional maps for partisan advantage — a process that typically occurs once a decade after the census.
Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas enacted more GOP-friendly maps, while Democrats struck back in California and Virginia. In Utah, Republicans want to block a court-ordered map that’s more favorable to Democrats.
Republican primary voters have given their approval to that approach. On Tuesday, five Trump-endorsed state legislative candidates in Indiana defeated GOP incumbents who had defied the president to block a gerrymander in the state last year.
But until now the Voting Rights Act limited how far that gerrymandering push could extend.
For decades, Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act helped protect majority-minority districts from gerrymandering and ensured voters could elect Black candidates to Congress in Southern states following the end of state laws that blocked Black citizens from voting. The Callais opinion guts Section 2 by curtailing the consideration of race when drawing legislative maps.
Republicans have praised the decision and many have been clear that they believe the opinion opens up a path to securing additional GOP seats. Trump has endorsed disregarding primary elections that have already been held so that states can pass new maps — which he predicts can net Republicans an additional 20 seats this fall.
“We cannot allow there to be an Election that is conducted unconstitutionally simply for the ‘convenience’ of State Legislatures,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “If they have to vote twice, so be it.”
Calls for GOP seats
Over the past week, some Republicans have cast majority-minority districts previously protected by the Voting Rights Act as racist because they were drawn with attention paid to the racial makeup of the map. U.S. Sen. Eric Schmitt, a Missouri Republican, wrote on X that there are “no more excuses for keeping racist maps,” for example, and called for their immediate removal.
Other GOP leaders have centered their case for quick action on political power. Like Trump, they have explicitly invoked control of the U.S. House as a reason to gerrymander. While Republicans have the House, their margin of control is razor thin: 217 to 212, with one independent and five vacancies. Even a modest Democratic wave in November will likely sweep away GOP control.
Alabama Senate President Pro Tem Garlan Gudger Jr. and House Speaker Nathaniel Ledbetter said in a joint statement that the state’s lawmakers have a responsibility to offer Alabama a “fighting chance” to elect seven Republican U.S. representatives. Two of the state’s seven districts are held by Democrats.
“Control of the U.S. House of Representatives could come down to just a handful of seats, and when the dust settles, the people of Alabama will know that their Legislature stood firm, acted decisively, and did everything within its power to fight for fair representation,” Gudger and Ledbetter said.
Alabama Republicans want to use a map passed by lawmakers in 2023 that federal courts blocked from taking effect. Alabama’s current map was drawn by a court-appointed special master.
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, a Republican, asked a federal district court Tuesday for an order that would let the state move forward with the gerrymander.
Carsie Evans of Anniston, Alabama, holds a sign outside the Alabama Statehouse on May 4, 2026, the day the Alabama legislature began a special session that could result in changes to primary elections and congressional legislative district lines. (Photo by Brian Lyman/Alabama Reflector)
In Louisiana, Republicans obtained special permission from the Supreme Court to quickly move forward on a new gerrymander after the justices struck down its current map in the Callais decision.
Absentee voting was already underway in Louisiana before Republican Gov. Jeff Landry suspended congressional primary elections set for May 16. Votes already cast for U.S. House candidates won’t count, Republican Secretary of State Nancy Landry, no relation, has said.
Louisiana state lawmakers are set to begin work on a new map this month that will likely break apart a New Orleans district held by U.S. Rep. Troy Carter, a Black Democrat who has fought with the governor.
“The Court’s decision in these cases has spawned chaos in the State of Louisiana,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, one of the Supreme Court’s three liberal justices, wrote in a dissent of the decision to quickly finalize Callais.
Court challenges
Still, Democrats and other opponents of the gerrymandering effort across the South are turning to the courts. Lawsuits have also been filed challenging the suspension of Louisiana’s congressional primaries and Florida’s new map also faces court challenges.
A petition filed in Louisiana state court by Elias Law Group, a major Democrat-aligned voting rights litigation firm, alleges the governor’s decision to halt the congressional primary is unlawful and unprecedented. Only the state legislature has the power to set the state’s election schedule, the petition argues.
“Governors do not get to cancel elections by executive fiat, least of all elections that are already underway, with ballots in voters’ hands and votes already cast,” Lali Madduri, a partner at Elias Law Group, said in a statement.
Regardless of how the legal challenges play out, Democrats say the Callais decision and the ongoing fallout from the decision underscore the need for massive voter turnout in the November election. A large Democratic turnout that results in a significant Democratic majority in the U.S. House would serve as a rebuke to Trump’s gerrymandering campaign, they say.
Blue state gerrymanders
U.S. Rep. James Clyburn, South Carolina’s sole congressional Democrat, said during the NAACP virtual meeting that a Democratic House could pass voting rights legislation.
“I would hope we could do that because I really think that’s our only hope legislatively,” Clyburn said.
Democrats have long called for the passage of a bill to restore preclearance, a major element of the Voting Rights Act that the Supreme Court paused in 2013, which required states and local governments with a history of racial discrimination to obtain federal permission before making voting changes.
But the measure would face a certain filibuster in the U.S. Senate. Even if Democrats broke a filibuster, Trump would likely veto it.
In effect, Democrats’ most realistic opportunity to enact major voting rights legislation relies on regaining control of the White House and Congress and ending the filibuster — a set of conditions that’s out of reach until at least 2029.
In the meantime, more Democrats are calling for aggressive gerrymandering of blue states as a way to punch back. U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Rep. Joseph Morelle, both New York Democrats, on Monday announced an initiative to encourage their state to redraw congressional districts ahead of the 2028 election.
Gerrymandering New York would be an intensive effort, likely requiring voters to repeal or suspend anti-gerrymandering provisions in the state constitution. But voters in California and Virginia have previously endorsed Democratic gerrymanders.
“This is just the beginning,” Jeffries said in a statement. “Across the nation, we will sue, we will redraw and we will win.”
Image by Stanley Wolfson/Wikimediacommons, in public domain
While making the film SELMA on location in Alabama in late Spring 2014, I recall standing at the crest of the bridge where, decades before, state troopers on horseback charged into a group of 600 peaceful Black marchers and beat them with clubs and bullwhips. It is an eerie, unshakeable feeling. You can feel the courage as you stand in that place, like it’s seeping through the cement, forever there. Forever resisting. The bravery that occurred there happened back in 1965. This is where John Lewis’s skull was fractured. And where the elder Amelia Boynton Robinson was left unconscious on the asphalt. A photograph of her would land on front pages around the world and change the course of American history.
As we worked on the bridge filming the Bloody Sunday scene to attempt to memorialize the events of that day, in preparation for it, we had read everything. Had interviewed eyewitnesses who were still living. Sat with people in Selma and other parts of Alabama. Reviewed the original footage and watched it until we could barely see straight. And still, standing on that bridge with our mighty crew, I was undone by the simplest thought: They just wanted to vote.
That’s it. That is the entire reason that horses charged and the clubs came down. Six hundred people wanted the basic right of citizenship for all people in the country of their birth. And the state of Alabama, with the tacit approval of the federal government, attempted to beat that desire out of them and stop them. The power in the very concrete of that place, however, rises up to tell the story.
They had tried, desperately and repeatedly to vote in all the mandated ways. But the system was designed to fail them with literacy tests that were applied selectively, registration offices open only two days a month during the work day, registrars who simply turned people away or threatened their jobs, and physical intimidation tactics, including rape and lynching. The evil intent of these tactics were never written down anywhere. But the outcome was undeniable.
By now, you have heard that the Supreme Court has declared undeniable outcomes are no longer sufficient grounds for legal remedy. That unless you can prove someone meant to discriminate — not just that they did — the law will not protect you. This is how the Supreme Court disemboweled Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act last week by removing the essential organs that gave it life.
The ruling destroys protections for voters of color, particularly Black voters, across the country and has set the nation back more than sixty years – before 1965. That is exactly the year that Trump and Vance and Hegseth and McConnell and Johnson and Musk and their ilk who support the actions of this administration want this country to be. Before 1965. Before legislation to ensure that our multiracial democracy was equipped with the tools to fully engage with its promise. Stacey Abrams, who has given her political life to this fight and knows its terrain better than almost anyone, wrote that we are “returning to the before-times when voters of color were silenced before a single vote was cast.”
The before-times.
This Supreme Court — case by case – has deliberately narrowed the Voting Rights Act’s enforcement power and built a road back to the before-times. Shelby County v. Holder removed the preclearance requirement. Brnovich v. DNC narrowed what could even constitute a violation. Now, Louisiana v. Callais finishes the gutting. Three cases. One trajectory. Back to how it was before. They sent the horses back onto the bridge. The billy clubs too. They just made sure the cameras don’t matter this time.
As we are told there is no money for healthcare, education, our crumbling infrastructure or SNAP benefits for hungry families because it is simply not “financially possible,” a billion dollars a day is siphoned off in a war of Trump’s choice in the Middle East. When Trump was asked about a timeline for resolution, he said: “We were in Vietnam for 18 years. We were in Iraq for many, many years… I don’t want to rush myself.”
I ask us to hold both of these things at once: the gutting of the Voting Rights Act and an administration who will spend without limit on war and ballrooms, but cannot find the money for the basic needs of its own citizens. These are not separate stories. They are the same story – told in different registers – about who this government believes deserves its resources and its regard.
And if you still need a symbol to clarify whose country this is being redecorated as: for America’s 250th birthday, the government will issue passports bearing Donald Trump’s image this year. The iconography of someone who does not intend for his ideas and institutional violence to be temporary.
Did you know that all four Black Republican members of the House are stepping down or retiring? The party that briefly performed inclusion and made a show of recruiting Black candidates to Congress has, under this administration, dropped even the pretense. This is an administration that has dismantled inclusion and equity programs, fired Black officials across multiple government agencies and our armed forces, assembled an overwhelmingly white senior team and routinely circulates white-supremacist references and rhetoric. Including a racist meme posted by the man who claimed the presidency himself.
And now its judicial appointees have completed the legal architecture to make sure that the growing political power of Black and Brown America can be structurally contained through gerrymandering and being redistricted into irrelevance.
This is not all happening by accident. This is a coordinated project by people who understand that the country’s actual demographics are not in their favor. So the strategy is suppression. Make it harder to vote. Make it harder to challenge the maps when voting happens. Remove the legal protections that allow those challenges to succeed. Do all of this through institutions that are insulated from accountability.
My writing partner on WHEN THEY SEE US Attica Locke posted something that I keep returning to. She wrote: “They cheat because they don’t have the numbers. There are more of us than there are of them. That’s a numerical fact that favors revolution. Hold steady. And know that they’re terrified.” Indeed. They are not winning because they are strong. They are rigging the game because they know they can’t win it fairly.
What brings me out of that despair is to think about precedent. There is precedent for our refusal and our courage. Ordinary people who did extraordinary things stood on this ground before. They knew they were outnumbered by force. They knew the law, as written and applied at that moment, was not on their side. They knew the president had not yet moved, that Congress had not yet acted, that the courts had not yet intervened. They knew all of that. And they walked onto the bridge anyway.
Because they understood that showing up and refusing to accept white supremacy dressed in the language of law was itself a form of power. They knew that visibility and witness and refusal are weapons that have moved this country toward its stated ideals.
Last week’s Supreme Court decision is the latest provocation in a very long war that was already old when those marchers stepped onto that Selma bridge in 1965. Sixty years later, the bridge is still there. And so are we.
It will take all of us to rebuild what they have undone. It will take all of us to overcome it again. But we shall. We shall.
This article was originally published by Ava DuVernay; please consider supporting the original publication, and read the original version at the link above.
The US Supreme Court, Race & the Right to Vote
Marjorie Cohn on the Roberts Court’s demolition of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the law that brought an end to the Jim Crow system of post-Civil War legalized racial segregation.
President Lyndon B. Johnson shaking hands with Martin Luther King Jr. at the signing of the Voting Rights Act on Aug. 6, 1965. (Yoichi Okamoto, LBJ Library, Wikimedia Commons)
In perhaps its most insidious decision in nearly a century, the U.S. Supreme Court disemboweled Section 2 of the landmark Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965, the “crown jewel” of the U.S. civil rights movement.
The VRA ended Jim Crow-era election procedures that precluded Black people from voting in the South through intimidation, literacy tests and poll taxes. It was part of a system of post-Civil War legalized racial segregation meant to restore white supremacy after the end of slavery and the federal, military occupation of the South.
Jim Crow lasted from 1877 until passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act the following year.
Section 2 of the VRA allows states to draw voting districts that benefit candidates from racial minorities and enables citizens to challenge election maps as racially discriminatory.
In its Wednesday ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, the 6-3 rightwing supermajority of the Court struck down a congressional map that a group of self-described “non-African American” voters had challenged as an unconstitutional gerrymander.
Court members Samuel Alito, John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett held that drawing districts to remedy past discrimination itself constitutes unconstitutional racial discrimination.
For 61 years, the VRA has been one of the most significant protections against racial gerrymandering. Thanks to the VRA, there are now more than 10,000 Black elected officials throughout the country, compared to about 1,500 in 1970.
Callais paves the way for the largest decrease in representation by Black members of Congress. It will lead to the elimination of dozens of Black and Latino-majority districts throughout the South and a substantial number of current congressional seats.
“This court’s project to destroy the Voting Rights Act is now complete,” Elena Kagan wrote in dissent, joined by Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. “Today’s decision renders Section 2 all but a dead letter.”
Section 2 prohibits any voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or practice or procedure, that “results in a denial or abridgment of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race.”
That occurs when voters of color “have less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice.”
Congress amended Section 2 in 1982 to provide that evidence of discriminatory intent is not necessary to prove racial discrimination; even policies that appear neutral can have a discriminatory effect on a particular group.
In the 1986 case of Thornburg v. Gingles, the Supreme Court interpreted the amended Section 2 and established a multi-factor test to decide when a jurisdiction must draw districts to provide minority voters a fair opportunity to elect representatives of their choosing.
The Gingles test has been used by courts for 40 years. Three years ago, the high court affirmed the test in Allen v. Milligan and held that Alabama’s congressional map likely violated Section 2.
The Callais Majority Rewrites a Congressional Statute
The Roberts Court since June 2022: Front row, from left: Sonia Sotomayor, Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice John Roberts, Samuel Alito and Elena Kagan. Back row, from left: Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Ketanji Brown Jackson. (Fred Schilling, Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States, Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain)
In Louisiana v. Callais, a coalition of Black voters and civil rights groups sought to reinstate a map that the Louisiana state legislature had adopted in 2024. The map established a second majority-Black congressional district. It was drawn in response to a U.S. district court ruling that a map drawn in 2022 likely violated Section 2.
That 2022 map included only one majority-Black district out of Louisiana’s six congressional districts. The coalition maintained that the 2022 map diluted the votes of Black residents, who comprise about one-third of Louisiana’s population.
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the district court decision that the 2022 map likely violated Section 2, and the appellate court ordered Louisiana to draw a new map by Jan. 15, 2024. The Louisiana Legislature complied and drew a map with a second majority-Black district.
In response, the “non-African American” voters challenged the 2024 map as unconstitutional because it separated voters based primarily on race.
Samuel Alito, writing for the Court’s supermajority, said that the 2024 map “relied too heavily on race.” He wrote that the coalition of Black voters had not proved “an objective likelihood that the [2022] map was the result of intentional racial discrimination,” even though it only contained one majority-Black district out of the state’s six Black districts.
Despite the 1982 congressional amendment to Section 2, stating that racial discrimination can be proved by showing discriminatory effect, the Court restored the requirement that voters challenging district maps must prove that “circumstances give rise to a strong inference that intentional discrimination occurred.”
While asserting that it was simply “updating” the Gingles test, the Court actually rewrote it to erect an insurmountable barrier to plaintiffs’ claims of racial discrimination.
“In sum,” Alito concluded,
“because the Voting Rights Act did not require Louisiana to create an additional majority-minority district, no compelling interest justified the State’s use of race in creating [the 2024 map]. That map is an unconstitutional gerrymander, and its use would violate the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights.”
After the Supreme Court’s decision, states can now defend their maps by claiming they were just engaging in partisan (as opposed to racial) gerrymandering. The high court decided in the 2019 case of Rucho v. Common Cause that although partisan gerrymandering is unconstitutional, it cannot be challenged in federal court.
“Today . . . the majority straight-facedly holds that the Voting Rights Act must be brought low to make the world safe for partisan gerrymanders,” Kagan wrote in her dissent.
Now “the State need do nothing more than announce a partisan gerrymander. Assuming the State has left behind no smoking-gun evidence of a race-based motive (an almost fanciful prospect), Section 2 will play no role.”
Kagan further declared:
“The Voting Rights Act is — or, now more accurately, was — one of the most consequential, efficacious, and amply justified exercises of federal legislative power in our Nation’s history. It was born of the literal blood of Union soldiers and civil rights marchers. It ushered in awe-inspiring change, bringing this Nation closer to fulfilling the ideals of democracy and racial equality.
And it has been repeatedly, and overwhelmingly, reauthorized by the people’s representatives in Congress. Only they have the right to say it is no longer needed — not the Members of this Court. I dissent, then, from this latest chapter in the majority’s now-completed demolition of the Voting Rights Act.”
Roberts Fulfills Longtime Goal of Neutering Voting Rights
Roberts taking the oath of office as chief justice by Justice John Paul Stevens in the White House as President George W. Bush and Roberts’ wife Jane look on, Sept. 29, 2005. (White House Photo Office /Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain)
“John Roberts has proven far more dangerous than ideologues like Thomas and Alito. He is a politician who plays a long game, slicing the salami piece by piece until there’s nothing left,” David Gespass, Alabama civil rights attorney and past president of the National Lawyers Guild, posted on Facebook.
Roberts has a history of eschewing the consideration of race in voting and discrimination cases. As a young lawyer in the Ronald Reagan administration, Roberts promoted a “colorblind” approach to voting rights and discrimination in public schools.
In 1982, when Congress was considering amending Section 2 to prohibit voting practices that had a racially discriminatory effect, Roberts was the point person in the Justice Department in the campaign to defeat the amendment.
Roberts authored the 2013 opinion in Shelby County v. Holder that gutted Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which had required federal preclearance before changes to election rules could go into effect in jurisdictions with a history of discriminatory voting practices.
“What the Supreme Court did today is stab the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in its very heart,” civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis said at the time.
But in Shelby, Roberts provided assurances that Section 2 would still be available to challenge racial discrimination in voting.
Now, the Roberts Court has neutered Section 2 as well.
Roberts’ “aim has always been clear, but he takes his time to reach it to deceive people into thinking he’s careful and deliberative, looking at each case on its own merits,” Gespass added. “He is careful and deliberative, carefully and deliberately moving toward a country that returns what little power others have won from rich white men back to them.”
‘An Outright Power Grab’
Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry at an even in Baton Rouge in October 2025. (Gage Skidmore / Flickr / CC BY-SA 2.0)
“With this decision in Louisiana v. Callais, the Supreme Court has opened the door to a coordinated attack on Black voters across this country,” Democratic Rep. Yvette Clarke of New York and chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, said at a press conference after the ruling was announced.
Nearly 70 of the 435 congressional districts are protected by Section 2, according to election law expert Nicholas Stephanopoulos.
Democracy Docket has data showing that the Callais ruling will likely derail 28 pro-voting lawsuits that seek to prevent state legislatures from drawing maps that dilute the power of racial minority voters.
The ruling has already prompted a rash of Republican redistricting efforts throughout the South in advance of the 2026 midterm elections this November. Republicans in Louisiana, Tennessee and Georgia are considering redistricting before the midterms.
Louisiana has suspended next month’s primaries to allow lawmakers to pass a new congressional map first. If these efforts occur and sustain legal challenges, the GOP stands to gain as many as five new seats this year.
GOP-led states could pick up as many as 19 new GOP-allied House seats in the coming years.
David Wasserman, senior editor and elections analyst for The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter, toldAxios, “I think, realistically, we’re probably talking about one to three seats for 2026, but it’s not hyperbolic to call this an apocalyptic ruling for Black majority districts in 2028 in the Deep South.”
An analysis conducted by The New York Times last year found that Democrats could lose about 12 majority-minority districts throughout the South if the Court struck down part of the VRA.
“This is an outright power grab,” Rep. Clarke said. “It’s about silencing Black voices, dismantling majority Black districts and rigging the maps so that politicians can choose their voters instead of the other way around.”
Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, dean of the People’s Academy of International Law and past president of the National Lawyers Guild. She sits on the national advisory boards of Veterans For Peace and Assange Defense, and is a member of the bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers and the U.S. representative to the continental advisory council of the Association of American Jurists. Her books include Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral and Geopolitical Issues.
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Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, dean of the People's Academy of International Law, and former president of the National Lawyers Guild. She is a member of the national advisory boards of Veterans For Peace and Assange Defense, and is a member of the bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers and the U.S. representative to the continental advisory council of the Association of American Jurists. Her books include Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral and Geopolitical Issues.
